Settlement reached in wrongful arrest case

Five young men cleared of sexually assaulting two girls in Monroe County six years ago will share in a $1 million settlement of a suit against four detectives from Pocono Mountain Regional Police.

Details of the settlement were released Thursday by attorneys Frank J. Tunis Jr. and George A. Reihner of the Scranton law firm of Wright & Reihner, which represented the men in a federal civil rights suit.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Scranton in 2010 accused the four police officers and other defendants of conspiring to wrongfully arrest and prosecute the five men — William Spiess, Kasheen Thomas, Gene Thomas II, Jaleel Holden and Jose Lacen — for gang-raping the teenage girls at a Tobyhanna area home in February 2008.

The charges against the men, three of whom were juveniles at the time of their arrests, were dismissed in 2009 prior to trial when the girls admitted lying at the preliminary hearing.

The federal complaint alleged the arrests were racially motivated. Four of the five men are black or Hispanic, and investigators wanted to appear tough on crime, the suit said.

In March 2013, U.S. District Judge James Munley dismissed the Pocono Mountain Regional Police Department and several other parties as defendants in the suit but let the case continue against the four individual officers, Richard W. Luthcke, John P. Bohrman, Lucas Bray and Chris Wagner.

The suit’s claims against two Monroe County officials, Assistant District Attorney Michael Rakaczewski and Detective Wendy Bentzoni, remain active.

Contact the writer:

dsingleton@timesshamrock.com

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